Replies

"An over-looked piece of the puzzle???"

For starters:

I think so (and I thought so at the time I posted that thread---one of my first attempts at html & posting a thread, lol)); he keeps a low and squeaky-clean profile, doesn't he.

4 points that have interested me straightaway:

1) Obama describes him as a “utility man,” and campaign advisor and Obama family friend Valerie Jarrett says he’s the person you call when you need help with a delicate situation. “He understands the importance of the personal touch and that e-mails and phone calls are not always appropriate,” she said, talking about a specific example that she wouldn’t describe in detail…

2) He was befriended by the Obamas before he even went to law school. At the University of Illinois Law School, he spent late-night study sessions at the International House of Pancakes with now-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.,

3)Chance encounter: Met Michelle Robinson as a summer intern at Sidley Austin and befriended her boyfriend, Barack Obama. [who was also at Sidley---in the same time frame]

4)Earlier, Strautmanis , a Chicago native, was legislative director and counsel for then-Rep. Rod Blagojevich who went on to work for his first gubernatorial campaign.

Possible inaccurate details as reported:

When Michelle was at Sidley, she wanted (was anxious and insistent) Jarrett meet her boyfriend Obama, BUT Jarrett says she never met Strautmanis until "Jarrett met Strautmanis after he joined Obama’s Senate staff and they worked closely together in the campaign. “Steady as a rock,” Jarrett said.""

I find this scenario improbable. I think Jarrett knew him before. If I am correct, why would Jarrett lie about it?

A timeline would be helpful. I did more research on this today & crashed Firefox. Will try to reconstruct the info I gathered later.

MEANWHILE...Came upon this by accident:

Is this Strautmanis in the photos posted by ETL:

Soure: When is Something Racist? When the Left Says It Is --- ETL post 32

Photo-op photos of Strautmanis:

Source

ETL: What do you think? Is that Strautmanis in your post? If so, do you know when & where those photos were taken?

(no link)

89 area black teens named scholarship semifinalists
Chicago Sun-Times - Thursday, September 25, 1986

EXCERPT

St. Ignatius - ... Michael A. Strautmanis ...

http://www.allbusiness.com/government/elections-politics-campaigns/12023812-1.html

“I was going to go to Mount Carmel High School,” Strautmanis said in an interview. He said he had “good hands” and had hoped to play tight end.

“My mother made me go to St. Ignatius [College Prep],” a school that at the time had no football team. “My mother wanted me to be in a disciplined environment and not play football. I was not pleased.... Now I’m very grateful.”

From St. Ignatius he went to the University of Illinois where he was a theater major, until he realized it wasn’t for him.

In the back of his head, he had the idea of being a lawyer. While in high school, Strautmanis had attended a street law class at the Loyola University Chicago College of Law, where he got to cross-examine a witness in a fictional criminal case.

He said he “loved that intellectual challenge.”

In 1990, while in college, he got a summer job as a bicycle messenger for Cannonball in Chicago and was assigned by Cannonball to the mail room at the law firm of Hopkins & Sutter.

“I then started to realize there was such a thing as law firms,” Strautmanis said. “I didn’t know any lawyers. I wanted to know what lawyers would be like.”

At Hopkins, “I started asking for a job for the next summer,” he said. “Someone told me another firm had a job, Sidley & Austin,” which was across the street.

He introduced himself to a woman in human resources at Sidley & Austin and then “called that poor woman once a week for a year.”

He was hired by Sidley as a paralegal soon after he graduated from college.

“I had zero paralegal training,” he said, but he did what he was assigned to do.

Strautmanis said he first became friends with Sidley associate Michelle Robinson, who was then engaged to Sidley associate Obama. Strautmanis assumed that Obama “was a geek” because Obama had been head of the Harvard Law Review.

Then, at the Sidley picnic, Obama turned out to be “a guy with a left-handed jump shot who kept getting that ... jump shot off against me,” Strautmanis recalled.

They, too, became friends, but Strautmanis described Obama and Robinson back then as “more mentors than friends.” When Strautmanis applied to the U of I College of Law, Obama gave him a letter of recommendation.

Strautmanis said he worked for a year for Wildman, Harrold, Allen & Dixon LLP in litigation after he got his law degree in 1994. He switched to Michael, Best & Friedrich LLP from 1995 to 1998 in labor and employment litigation.

But politics seemed to be what really called him.

Jesse Jackson Jr., who had been a year ahead of Strautmanis at U of I law, was running for Congress in 1995. Strautmanis said he worked on Jackson’s successful campaign. Strautmanis then worked in Chicago for the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996, and he got to know attorney Daniel W. Hynes, a fellow a St. Ignatius grad, who in 1998 was elected comptroller of Illinois.

In 1998, Strautmanis got his first government appointment and went to work in Washington, D.C., as a special assistant to the general counsel at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

>>What do you think? Is that Strautmanis in your post?
>>If so, do you know when & where those photos were taken?

I don't know if it's him. And I don't really have time now to look into it, or even to read about who he is. But here's something regarding Michelle and the law firm she worked for (Sidley Austin in Chicago):

When Michelle was at Sidley...

Did Bernardine Dohrn Mentor Michelle [Robinson] Obama at Chicago Law Firm?

"The media has been very gentle on Michelle Obama, but one blogger asks a very interesting question about Bernardine Dohrn's possible mentoring of Michelle at Sidley Austin in Chicago, where Dohrn worked as a paralegal [her felony conviction meant she couldn't pass the Illinois bar exam] while Michelle was an intern during summers while in law school. Michelle was later taken into the prestigious firm when she graduated from Harvard Law. Michelle in turn mentored Obama in '89 & they eventually married.

The MSM will never ask any questions about Dohrn & Michelle [Robinson] Obama intersecting at Sidley Austin. It would be nice if Republicans had more investigative reporters because my inquiring mind would like to know.

It might be that the Ayers-Dohrn relationship with the Obamas goes back earlier and the relationship could be much more extensive than previously reported."

http://oldatlanticlighthouse.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/was-bernardine-dohrn-the-mentor-of-michelle-obama-at-sidley-austin/

http://archive.redstate.com/blogs/daveinboca/2008/apr/25/did_bernardine_dohrn_mentor_michelle_robinson_obama_at_chicago_law_firm